Wired finally publishes an article talking about the inevitable decline of the human workforce.
It may be hard to believe, but before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines. In other words, robot replacement is just a matter of time. This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work.
I’ve been talking about this for some time. In much less than 87 years I think the vast majority of jobs performed by human beings today will not only no longer be done by humans, but many simply won’t exist at all.
It won’t be that long before driving an automobile will be illegal since human drivers are simply error-prone nightmares of high-speed carnage. Besides, humans are too unpredictable to put on roads that will be optimized for travel by highly advanced distribution algorithms. So there won’t be any human cab drivers, truck drivers, train engineers, airplane pilots, bus drivers, road cleaners, etc…
Well before the end of the century just about anything to do with construction or manufacturing will be automated. Houses will be ordered in a catalog and a huge machine will lumber out to the lot and within a few weeks, presto! new house. Skyscrapers will be built by robots.
It is hard to come up with any job that humans will do that aren’t associated with producing some sort of content intended for consumption by other humans. Writing, painting, composing, sculpting, etc. Pretty much anything else you can think of will be done faster, cheaper and more efficiently by machine.
What sort of economic model can we come up with that will work in such a society? Will money itself become obsolete?
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI’m kinda struggling with that as well. It’s an issue, for sure.
Right now, too many people think of “robots” as being those things which will take away our “menial” jobs – assembly line stuff, for the greatest part.
Yeah. Right now, we have “robots” who prepare legal documents and perform medical diagnoses
There ain’t no job safe.
Star Trek TNG!
I hope I’m not alive to see this.
What is the sense in life if you do basically nothing, accomplish nothing, create nothing, allowing a robot to do everything? Honestly, I cannot think of a more heartless environment to live in.
I think this would be the beginning of the end of the human race, not it’s enhancement.
What would be the point in living? The brains would atrophy. And what would happen should technology fail, which it could ultimately do? No one would know how to do anything for basic survival.
Jussayin’…
I am torn.
I am one of those who performs a difficult job on a daily basis under immense stress for little recognition (but a pretty nice salary) and finds little enjoyment in the activity.
I think the vast majority of the human race spends a majority of their lives doing what they “have to do” to survive.
If human beings truly were relieved of that need, what would we do with our time?
I know that I’d spend a lot more time writing and creating stuff, as well as learning and experiencing things.
If we can work out some sort of economic model, I believe it could well be a positive thing for humans.
Now, if I worked in a field where I loved my job every single day, I might feel differently.
But I don’t.
Isn’t that the point though? So what if you are able to have time to create and write, it will all be done for us, more efficiently, without need for our input.
How do you make an economic model when you really have nothing to contribute? What is the point of life itself if not to explore and expand the mind? What do you get “paid for”? And the ruling class would have all the power amassed in their hands, no one would have a voice for fear that their allotment could be reduced.
Yes, jobs can have a lot of stress and drudgery to them, but a life of leisure just has little to no value when it isn’t earned through your own efforts.
And with this type of life, you don’t have driving, you don’t dare build anything as it would be deemed dangerous, dare not create anything as it would not match up to the machine.
Society would break down, not build up from this. What is the point of anything? And police state would be beyond our comprehension, as robots would be everywhere, seeing everything.
What an empty, boring life it would be, and probably a longer one at that, and for what? Your hobbies would be inferior and possibly deemed illegal as it wouldn’t be conformist.
So, let’s say you can get any “car” you want. You can’t drive it. You just sit in it. To go to some location where you sit some more.
Minds wouldn’t need to study anything. And it could look dangerous to the ruling class.
Tyranny would reign supreme, while you are just an expendable commodity. You are really of no value or worth.
Of what value would life have? You would be basically a pet, not a struggling human looking and inspiring change and innovation. A slug would have a more fulfilling life.
Jus… that’s a pretty pessimistic take on what some people might consider a prerequisite for any real “utopia”…
I do think that many, maybe even most, humans in such a situation would probably just spend their time in selfish pursuits.
But outside of “work” isn’t that what most people do today anyway?
The real question is not whether some people would waste all that free time, but whether some people might actually use it to greater purpose.
Technology is not going to change human nature and humans – well most humans – like to create things and be productive. Consequently, I think there will always be a market for goods and services (art, music, design, food, etc.) created by talented biological humans as opposed to machines, or even some human-tech hybrid. In fact, these ‘certified pure human’ creations may indeed become more valuable as more and more jobs are replaced by machines.
Like Cosmic, I wouldn’t mind all that much if my present job was replaced by some unblinking machine (not prone to fits of wanderlust and back pain as I am enduring today) if it meant I could spent more time creating things that in such a world might prove to be more rare and valuable than they are today.
Or, maybe, there would be a glut of new products created by the minds and hands of human beings since more people would have time on their hands to devote to such pursuits. Makes me think this new economy could serve to move humanity toward some kind of creative renaissance.
Who knows? It’s definitely interesting to think about…
Dadman, the issues I see with what you say might be:
1) What if whatever is made by humans is inferior and more costly than whatever which can be made by “machines?” (This includes ALL “artisans” including actors, poets, whatnot.)
2) As jobs disappear, so, too, must money. What will be the medium of exchange between those who create and those who covet?
3) At some point, there will be almost no discernible difference between what one person can create and what another can. (Think Matrix…) Why procure from someone else what you can yourself create?
It’s going to be an interesting century.
Drax, that’s why I keep saying that a “new economic model” has to be created. An economy based on human beings providing the basic necessities, convenience items and luxury items for other human beings is clearly not going to survive technological advances.
The only reason our current economic model exists is because the industrial revolution created a situation where the vast majority of people don’t produce what they need to survive. A thousand years ago the vast majority of people were farmers or hunters and the economic model was all about about producing and distributing goods which people created in surplus to what they themselves needed.
If you go back ten thousand years the economic model was all about barter where people just traded stuff with each other. But everyone more or less produced what they needed themselves.
My guess is that the future economic model is going to be based entirely on leisure, entertainment and luxury goods. Basic necessities like food, shelter, internet access and health care will be provided by the state. People will be able to do what they need to do without having to “work”.
But there will still be a desire for leisure, entertainment and luxury. As much as our economic model today is criticized for being all about “status” in the future that may well be ALL that the economic model is about.
In that case I suspect that “money” will become a means of measuring societal influence. Kim Kardashian may well be an example of the future of the economy. Twitter could well become the embryo of the new model. How much you can “buy” may well be based on how many people are interested in what you “buy”. And what makes you interesting will be what drives your “wealth.”
That’s what I suspect will happen.
But, take it a step … further. When comes the time when the “state” can and does provide EVERYTHING anyone could need or desire and at no “cost.” (If the “state” can provide the “necessities,” then, it follows that, eventually, it can provide all else as well.)
It’s an interesting tangle, to be sure.
Drax, the sort of thing I’m talking about is a dynamic immediate response of human beings that is tracked by automated systems and provides “status” credits based on how the public reacts to individuals. So until the state can actually control the minds of individual humans, it’s hard to see how the state could control that.
However, the state could certainly corrupt that and cheat the system so that the results are not accurate and provide what the state seeks. But that’s a different discussion…
When you don’t produce anything, you are pretty much useless to the state. It means having to limit people and the length of their life.
Also, just think of the unlimited power of the state in such a set up.
Imagine an Obama being control of who gets to eat. Not based on need as much as ideology.
I’d rather be dead. I would produce as much dead as alive, and I wouldn’t be taking.
I am not saying that people “won’t produce anything.” I’m saying that the vast majority of goods and services produced by human labor today will no longer need to be produced by human labor in the future.
That’s all.
As the linked article indicates, things change and economic models evolve. The economic model based on agriculture would not work today. The economic model based on hunting/gathering would not have worked 200 years ago. Our economic model won’t work 100 years from now.
Not because people “won’t produce anything”. But, just as before, because people “won’t produce what they produce today.”
What will they produce?
I dunno, but I can pretty much guarantee you that 200 years ago the notion that I could make a living by typing all day long creating electronic documents in front of a computer monitor would have been considered pretty much insanity.
This is why we need to push out into space. Large-scale settlement in space will be extremely “blue-collar” for a long time. While it will obviously involve lots of tech, it will also involve lots of human skills in reacting to novel and unusual situations that robots tend to have a hard time dealing with.
If you think about the jobs that would be actually needed in a Mars colony, they’re mostly blue collar: construction, mining, agriculture, tons of infrastructure work, etc. Actual scientists would be a fairly small part of the headcount, and even many of these will be doing hardhat work when they can.
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It won’t be that long before driving an automobile will be illegal since human drivers are simply error-prone nightmares of high-speed carnage. Besides, humans are too unpredictable to put on roads that will be optimized for travel by highly advanced distribution algorithms. So there won’t be any human cab drivers, truck drivers, train engineers, airplane pilots, bus drivers, road cleaners, etc…”
If so, it will be a short lived experiment with a lot of carnage and cascades of cars all going off the same closed overpass.
I’m somewhat optimistic about computation, but you have to realize that a computer is a simple device that sees the world through N<100 pins (usually 32 or so, in the case of embedded stuff) and is less complicated than an insect's brain. It would take several thousand current processors and terabytes of ram to hold and process equivalent state to the human brain in realtime. What the human brain does is no trivial trick – it is still vastly more powerful and finely tuned than our attempts at mimicking it.
That's not my fundamental issue with this though. Suppose we did have computers that could more effectively make these decisions. I had this argument with an acquantance the other night. He's one of the ones that thinks that computers need to control aircraft and lock pilots from doing certain things at certain times (I think the one he was talking about was raising flaps when over a certain altitude limit).
My argument was this: You aren't the pilot – what if you needed to raise your flaps?
PersonB: You don't. There's no situation where that is necessary, and it endangers the aircraft.
Me: But you aren't the pilot in that situation. What if there is some unforseen circumstance where that is necessary to avoid some accident, conserve fuel when you are almost out for example, something of that sort.
PersonB: Well, there isn't anything that shouldn't be perfectly avoidable by operating properly.
Me: But if there is?
PersonB: Even if there is, that decision needs to be handled in a situation where cool heads can analyze it properly. Leave it to the programmers. Pilots pulling random switches are dangerous.
Me: But isn't the plane supposed to be a tool to do what the pilot needs it to do?
PersonB: No! The plane is supposed to get people from point A to point B safely. It isn't supposed to do anything dangerous, even if the pilot wants it to. The pilot can go play Russian roulette on his own time.
Me: But at least there should be an override – the pilot might know something you don't.
PersonB: Unlikely – he's more likely to be completely overreacting to a stressful circumstance.
My fundamental problem is that automation of tools is intended to make them more useful *to the users of the tools*. (In the case of a commercial airliner, the user might more properly be thought of as the airline, but the pilot is their officer, and he is the representative of the owner's will)
There is a big difference between a tool and an uncooperative informant/overlord. A tool does what the user wants/occasionally desperately needs it to do. Automation of that tool allows the user to attend to other things while it performs a process – it doesn't serve as a substitute for the user's will!
Even assuming that computers are so powerful, so aware, and so talented that they could theoretically make better decisions than the user unaided (even though at present this is science fiction) – it still doesn't mean that the user is served by *violating his will* and *overriding his top level decisions*, including the decision to go to a lower level of operation because something isn't working!! Having an infinitely capable servant that "serves" you by preventing you from doing something you are trying to do, by denying control – that isn't a servant, it's a master.
The idea that it is possible to be helped by overriding your will, even by something that is "smarter" than you, is a rather disturbing indicator of a totalitarian mindset when we are talking about human beings ruling other human beings. The logic doesn't change when you substitute in computers/angels/God, or even cars and washing machines. It won't stop the control freaks from trying, and IMO failing bloodily, yet again.
Under a certain altitude limit, I mean.
I can already envision several scenarios where it might be necessary – you’re low on fuel and are trying to make it to a runway – you’re altimeter is malfunctioning – one flap is damaged and you need to maintain roll – etc etc etc.
As to the economics, I do need to do some math on that eventually.
I think the basic economic arrangements of capitalism will still necessarily apply, even if the amount of time we spend working, what is expensive/important to us, etc gets shuffled around.
Basically, the arrangement between free men that has been going on since the beginning of time is:
I’ll do X for you (something that requires my finite attention, something that I wouldn’t be doing for kicks anyway) if you in return do Y for me.
Why does the owner of the construction machine go to a site and auto-construct a house for person A? Why does the owner/user of the auto-composa-bot crank out a song for person B? Or if the auto-composa-bot is owned by person B, who put in the effort to program it and why?
The only alternatives to reciprocation that I’ve seen are person X putting a gun to person Y’s head and demanding that he work on pain of some punishment. Occasionally they’ll try to convince person Y that it is for his own good, and provide him things that person X thinks he “needs”, but not the things that person X actually wants obviously. That would be like reciprocating.
Anyway, in the future:
* people will need to design the robots
* people will need to troubleshoot malfunctioning robots
* people will, absent some absurdly capable AI, need to do things requiring a lot of dexterity and dealing with the hair of the real-world environment, like plumbing, stringing cables, cutting hair, running more personal types of services.
* people will *want* to have their own versions of whatever these super-capable tools are, to do things they want to do.
I guess the infinite limit is a world where people don’t need each others services at all – everything they want to do but don’t want to attend to (even if only mentally) gets done somehow anyway, without involving anyone else. I have no idea how this could be instantiated. They wouldn’t work then, I suppose – only pursue whatever they want to be doing without regard to means.
“* people will *want* to have their own versions of whatever these super-capable tools are, to do things they want to do.”
Tech support for these tools will then be required.
Even if you are a stellar engineer and have your own do-everything-tool – do you really want to spend the time working out every detail of the tasks you want to accomplish with it? I imaging certain things will still be delegated.
“need someone to work out the shielding for my fusion plant that I’m putting in the woodshed – I’m not a civil engineer. Need someone to design the fusion plant, and put me in touch with deuterium suppliers after they let me know that it needs deuterium to run correctly, and how to set up/ calibrate it -I’m not a nuclear engineer. Now that the plumbing is out of the way, I can lay out my chemistry lab – etc)”
ASEI, I understand all of your points. I must say that I find myself in disagreement with the majority of them.
Google is already testing automated cars. Some states have already passed laws to regulate them. They are coming.
While I have great appreciation for the human brain, and even for insect brains for that matter, I am afraid that I find your predictions about computer capability to be the modern day equivalent of calling the Wright Brothers “crazy” or calling Robert Goddard “the moon man”.
I learned long, long ago that the most profound thing about human technological advancement is how vigorously every single advance was deemed to be impossible by the “experts.”
I expect that automated car driving will happen. It will happen in my lifetime. I myself may one day be in an automated car.
And I stand by my prediction that within 100 years it will likely be considered an act of supreme irresponsibility to not allow a computer to do the driving.
Well, “computer” is a concept. What actually ends up controlling things may not really match our current computer architecture or technology expectations.
But it will still be technology.
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